I pushed things a bit, and finished row 42 of the Princess yesterday. That’s a good place to leave it, because a Whole New Pattern-Stitch will be introduced on Row 43. Talk about excitement. So tonight it will be Lorna's nudibranch.

And IK surprised me by turning up – it always gets here much faster than Knitter’s, without seeming to have to resort to airmail. I was briefly tempted by Pam Allen’s shrug, as a possible Games entry: but decided that I was uneasy about the lacey wristlets, and uninspired by the yarn, which would have the additional disadvantage of being expensive even if the customs people didn’t catch me this time. I downloaded the pattern for the Kate Gilbert jacket, but what with eight pages of small print, and my knitting schedule pretty tight until at least mid-’07, I doubt if I’ll get around to it.

I greatly admire Kate Gilbert.

And I heard back from the Guernsey yarn people, and have placed the order for Herring Girls Pink, credit-card number and all. Maureen, thank you for the suggestion about Liz Lovick’s Herring Girls pattern: I ordered it, too, and I think it’ll be useful. What I meant by my rather snooty remark the other day about patterns, is that I tend not to buy books any more which are simply a collection of patterns. I saw a nice Jean Moss book in a charity shop yesterday, for instance, at a reasonable price, and left it there. An exception will always be made for any book by Kaffe or Candace Strick.

Non-knit

There was an article in yesterday’s Waffy which began, believe it or not, “The road from Pitlochry to Strathardle in Perthshire takes you through some of the most desolate and barren countryside in Scotland.” And a bit later on: “A less promising place to grow food crops it would be hard to imagine.”

It was about some folk in Enoch Dhu (within walking distance of us, if one were feeling energetic) who grow organic vegetables. Their Big Idea is to mix compost with fine rock dust, obtained from a quarry. It is supposed to restore leeched-out trace elements to the impoverished soil.

I knew they were there, and now I really will have to go see them. They have also got a lot of glass and polytunnels, by which I am not tempted. I will acquire a sack of fine rock dust from them if my husband will let me, but he won’t be keen.

I suppose when one limes one’s patch, one is in fact spreading fine rock dust. Look at it that way.

The other thing in yesterday’s Waffy was an article about the Flylady, one of whose acolytes I am more than slightly embarrassed to confess that I am. (Although you wouldn’t suspect it to look around here, I think she’s done me some good, too.) A picture of her accompanied the article, and far from being the soigne figure of my imagination, she is stout. Stouter than I am. I find this enormously endearing, and encouraging.

(I wrote the word cafe the other day, and Microsoft Word automatically adorned it with an accent. Soigne is apparently outside their vocabulary, or perhaps I'm spelling it wrong.)